More cheap flights bound for Poland

Easyjet, one of Britain’s biggest cheap airlines, has announced that it will be serving more Polish airports in the coming months.

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The expansion is a continuation of what the industry has seen over the past few years in the country, and it doesn't seem to be stopping soon. Is the market becoming oversaturated though?

The airline has already opened routes to Kraków this year from Newcastle and Belfast, and October this year sees new routes from London's Gatwick airport to Gdańsk and Kraków. Edinburgh and Bournemouth will also start flights to Kraków towards the end of October, just in time for the All Saints holiday in Poland at the beginning of November.

But why the expansion? I spoke to Samantha Day, a spokeswoman for Easyjet at their headquarters in Luton.

"Poland is very much an emerging market for Easyjet, we've been growing at a rate of around 36% year on year since we began operations in 2004. We see that there's strong potential for further growth in the future as well, so we expect to carry over 1 million passengers on our Polish routes in the coming year."

The importance of cheap flights to Polish cities is a boon for business and the populations of both countries, with Brits taking advantage of Poland as a tourist destination and Poles using the flights to shuttle themselves to work. Samantha Day once more:

Because Poland has such a huge population and because Poland is such an attractive destination for British travellers, then low-cost flights not only mean a boost to tourism, but it also means that there are stronger business links as well as a perfect service for economic workers, for Polish people that are working abroad who want to either go home to visit their families, or for families to depart Poland and visit their loved ones when they're working abroad."

Cheap flights to Poland are becoming big business, but does Poland really benefit from them? I spoke to Andrew Kurethof the Warsaw Business Journal.

"I think Poland does benefit the cheap airlines coming in. The more cheap airlines there are the more competition there is, and that means pressure on prices, and as we know price is king in Poland, and better prices means more people can travel."

Whilst there is growing demand for flights, there doesn't seem to be any worry that the market will become over-inundated with cheap flights from abroad. Not yet, at any rate:

"I don't think there are too many of them, and I think that once there are too many, then the market will take care of it. If there's too many airlines, then some airlines won't be able to make it in the market, and they'll fail, and the best airlines will come out on top."

Cheap flights can only mean a good thing, yet there is growing concern that Poland's airport infrastructure is not able to handle the huge amounts of passenger traffic that lands in Poland's airports every year. Problems with Warsaw Okęcie's Terminal 2 are known by every air traveller flying to and from the capital's airport, and Poland's smaller regional airports are bursting at the seams.

Andrew Kureth, however, shows the pluses and minuses of the infrastructure in it's present state.

"No it's not adequate enough to handle such huge passenger traffic, and although most airports are expanding at the moment, it's probably not enough, they'll need to expand. But it's a good problem to have because I'd rather people were moving, and business was getting done, rather than nobody travelling at all."

Poland has a lot of work to do to prepare it's airports in the coming years. With passenger traffic rising rapidly year on year, and Euro 2012 only 5 years away, not only Poland's airports, but it's entire transport infrastructure will have to undergo a huge overhaul. For the moment though, people just want to fly, and not have to pay through the nose for it.

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